Financial Reporting & Analysis

 Financial Reporting & Analysis

A large part of finance is understanding businesses, and in order to do that well, a sound knowledge of accounting is essential. While you may not need to know how to actually make financial statements, being able to read them and to draw inferences from them is an important skill to have.

There are several highly-rated courses on financial reporting available on Coursera, many of which are free unless you want a certificate of completion. The popular ones are:

  1. Financial Accounting Fundamentals (offered by University of Virginia)

  2. Introduction to Financial Accounting (offered by University of Pennsylvania)


Go through the course content and the expected time commitment for the 4-5 top-rated courses, and choose the one that best meets your requirements. However, do note that most of these courses do not go into a lot of depth, and are beneficial only if you are an absolute beginner.


If you want to understand how to read and interpret financial statements in more depth, books would be preferable. Some of the good and easy to understand books are:

  1. How Finance Works (Mihir Desai)

  2. Key Management Ratios (Ciaran Walsh)

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